


The Problem to the Answer

by Laura Kaye (laurakaye)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AO3 1 Million, Clint Needs a Hug, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dog Cops, Holidays, Hugs all around, M/M, Pajamas & Sleepwear, Phil Needs a Hug, Sleepy Cuddles, Snow and Ice, Valentine's Day Fluff, the best laid plans etc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 11:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's got twelve hours to make this the best Valentine's Day ever. Fortunately, Clint is <i>great</i> at valentines. </p><p>(AKA Phil and Clint's Excellent Valentine's Day Adventure.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Problem to the Answer

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to thegirlthatisclumsy for beta and the squeemail crew for egging me on!
> 
> Note that this is a Hawkguy/MCU mashup universe; you might consider it a spiritual sequel to "Clause 19."
> 
> Title taken from "The Things We Do For Love." Inspired by [ this actual news story.](http://www.today.com/news/midst-storm-georgia-sheriffs-office-cancels-valentines-day-2D12107750)

The thing is, Clint just lost track of the time. 

In his defense, he’s been really busy with Avengering lately, plus the Director sent him to DC just in time for a giant freak snowstorm to sweep in and basically shut the city down for three days. It’s not that Clint doesn’t know how to handle himself in snow, it’s that it’s really hard to  be inconspicuous when you’re literally the only person on the street, wearing an all-black tac suit in the middle of a snowbank.

Plus he’s supposed to be undercover, so.

Anyway, he ends up holed up in the hotel, living off overpriced hotel food and haunting the shitty hotel gym in an attempt to not completely flip out from cabin fever, and he’s in the middle of hour two on the least squeaky treadmill when the local news program on the ancient TV hanging from the ceiling gradually intrudes into his conscious attention.

“…county sheriff made a tongue-in-cheek announcement that Valentine’s Day is cancelled due to accumulated snow and ice making local roads unsafe,” a perky anchor says. “He suggests postponing celebrations from tomorrow until the eighteenth, allowing men to get their shopping done without risking their lives.”

“Or at least no more than they ordinarily would if they buy the wrong thing!” the other anchor says, baring white teeth in a wide, fake smile, and they chuckle at each other.

Clint hates them both.

“Aw, Valentine’s Day,” he mutters. “No.”

Phil was going to be in New York for Valentine’s Day. He makes it back to town whenever he can, obviously,  but he’d planned his team’s mission schedule specifically to give them that weekend off, and now Clint’s going to miss it.

It’s not that he thinks Phil is a girl, or even that actual, real-life girls (not to be confused with girls on TV) actually really think Valentine’s Day is some kind of sacred referendum on how much you care about them or some shit. He’s always mostly dated people in the business, who understand about how you can’t exactly order flowers from a sniper’s nest, especially if the person you are ordering them for lives and works in a secure facility that suspects any outside delivery of being some kind of infiltration attempt. Plus Natasha says that the whole Valentine’s Day cultural narrative just reinforces outdated misogynist expectations of gender role performance in the service of corporate greed.

Still, he had actually meant to make it special this year, because he might be an insensitive clod (as many people over the years have informed him) but when your lover is literally _brought back from the dead_ it tends to make you reevaluate shit in your life. Phil likes old-fashioned things (suits, fountain pens, classic cars, Captain America), so even though he usually hates people fussing over him, Clint had thought he might like a fancy Valentine’s Day shindig to commemorate both of them being alive and not brainwashed and still in— well. Still putting up with each other.

He hadn’t really gotten much farther than that—did you even buy flowers for guys? Is that even a thing?— when he’d had to go tranq a mutant bear in Maine, and then back up a recovery team in London, and then less than a day later he’d been on a plane to DC.

Suddenly, he can’t take the bleach-and-old-sweat smell of the gym anymore, and goes upstairs to take a long, resentful shower and put off calling Phil to let him know he’s not going to make it home. Phil isn’t going to be mad; he’s going to understand completely, because that’s who Phil is. He’s going to be totally awesome about it and give Clint the thoughtful gift that he’s had for weeks and not even care that Clint has showed up two days late with, like, two scratch lotto tickets and a Hershey bar.

Stupid missions. Stupid snow. 

When he finally gets out of his shower, he makes his scheduled daily check-in with SHIELD. Naturally, now that they’ve completely ruined his plans, they’re canceling the op. He’s welcome to stay put until the snow melts.

Fuck _that._ It’s still only the afternoon of the thirteenth and Phil won’t be home until morning; Clint has gone farther in less time and under worse conditions. He checks out immediately, using the auto-check-out thing on the television to avoid inflicting his shitty mood on a human. He cleans out the minibar out of spite on his way out, dumping the contents into the stupid messenger bag that wardrobe made him carry so he’d blend in with the asshole consultants in his hotel.

His first thought is SHIELD DC, but for once they don’t have anything scheduled to go even close to New York that night, and there’s not even any ongoing robot squirrel event that Clint can claim needs his immediate presence to justify commandeering something. By this point, though, Clint is tired and cranky and stubborn and just wants to be home, where he can sulk in peace and maybe at least get to _see_ Phil before one of them inevitably gets sent off somewhere again.

It takes several hours and more walking than he’d prefer, but he’s able to use his SHIELD ID to get a spot on a military flight back to New York. The plane is pretty obviously full of people on weekend passes trying to get to their loved ones for Valentine’s Day, and Clint tries not to take all the eager faces and red and pink boxes peeking out of duffels as a personal affront from the universe. He eats a sullen in-flight dinner of ten-dollar pretzels and tiny bottles of rum.

When he turns his phone back on after the plane lands, there’s a text from Phil. _Got delayed,_ it reads, perfectly spelled and capitalized and punctuated because: Phil.  _Be there ASAP, probably around 1800. Sorry!_

Clint doesn’t even worry about what sort of crisis has arisen on the Bus; he’s just grinning like a crazy person in the middle of the airport, because HAH, take that, Valentine’s Day! He’s still got time to pull this off, and Phil will never have to know that Clint’s a screwup.

Well. Phil won’t have to be _reminded_ that Clint’s a screwup.

Today.

Whatever. The point is, Clint has twelve hours, give or take, to make Valentine’s Day magic happen. He is going to _own this_.

The rest of the day is kind of a blur. Clint thinks that if this were a sitcom, the whole thing would be represented in some kind of crazy high-speed montage over, like, _Flight of the Bumblebees_ , and would end with him panting and covered in heart-shaped confetti. In real life, he reaches six pm exhausted, but clean, shaved and pressed, wearing an actual suit and in possession of honest to God restaurant reservations (for eight-thirty, in case Phil is later than expected, because apparently Tony Stark has sad personal experience with Valentine emergencies). He’s got a bottle of good champagne in some kind of fancy chilling contraption (Tony is also good for booze emergencies), a box of premium chocolates, and a huge vase of purple roses, because despite being way cooler than red ones they aren’t in as much demand, apparently, and so were actually available for purchase. There’s a Valentine card that was hand-drawn by Captain America sitting at Phil’s place at the table; it has a little cartoon of Phil beating up some Hydra goons while Clint looks on admiringly. The inside says “You’re my hero, Valentine!” in Steve’s stupidly fancy, third-grade-penmanship-teacher handwriting, and then Clint signed it to make sure it was obviously from him.

Clint surveys his accomplishments with pride. “I am _excellent_ at Valentine’s Day,” he says.

On the sitcom that Clint’s life isn’t, Phil would come through the door just in time to hear him say it. In real life, it’s another half hour before Clint hears his key in the lock, and in the intervening time Clint has mostly been sitting anxiously on the very edge of one of the kitchen chairs trying not to wrinkle his pants. He is busy trying to decide between a nonchalant “hey, Phil” and a goofy “Happy Valentine’s Day!” when he gets a good look at Phil and loses his train of thought entirely.

“Holy shit, babe, what the hell happened?” 

Phil has a giant shiner, a fat lip, and traces of blood in his hair. He’s wearing a t-shirt that is too big, his own dress shoes, scuffed and filthy, and what Clint is 90% sure are Melinda May’s sweatpants.

“There were…complications with the mission,” Phil says sheepishly, and hands him a plastic grocery bag from the bodega down the street. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Clint mostly just wants to kiss him, but he’s shooting these tense little looks at the bag, so he decides to put him out of his misery and opens it. Inside is a kingsized Snickers bar (Clint’s favorite), a bottled Frappuccino, and an obviously bootlegged DVD with a card stuck to the front.

Clint opens the card. It says “Happy Birthday to a Special Nephew!” Everything after “Happy” is crossed out with Sharpie and “Valentine’s Day” is printed in neat capital letters underneath. The original illustration was two teddy bears hugging, but the same Sharpie has altered the drawing so that one of the bears has a bow and quiver slung over its back and the other one is wearing sunglasses and a little tie. The inside just says, “Love, Phil.”

It’s pretty awesome, if Clint is honest. He might stick it up on his refrigerator. He shuffles the card to his other hand to get a good look at the DVD and blinks. “Doge Kops?”

Phil actually blushes. It’s maybe the most adorable thing Clint’s ever seen. “Sorry,” he says. “What with everything, I forgot to go shopping.” He looks around the room, sharp eyes taking in the champagne cooler, the giant roses, Clint’s suit. He groans. “God, I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll make it up to you— just give me a minute to shower and we can—“ he is actually starting to babble, and Clint isn’t enough of an asshole to let him continue. He steps into Phil’s personal space, grabbing onto his hand, and Phil stops.

“Phil,” Clint says, and then he has to stop and brush a featherlight kiss on the corner of Phil’s swollen mouth.

Phil relaxes, his eyes crinkling a little with humor. “Yeah?"

“Wanna order pizza and watch Doge Kops?” 

“That sounds amazing,” Phil admits, and he lets Clint herd him into the bathroom for a shower while Clint stealthily cancels the restaurant reservations and calls out for pizza.

When Phil emerges, he’s warm and damp and easy, and he’s exchanged his motley getup for a pair of Clint’s flannel pajama bottoms and the threadbare Captain America t-shirt that Clint keeps stealing out of his drawer and he keeps stealing back. His hair is mussed and he’s in sock feet and he is the best thing Clint’s seen in weeks.

They eat pizza and champagne and chocolate truffles on their couch, and Clint confesses his own Valentine-related memory issues and makes Phil laugh recounting the story of his epic Valentine quest, which he maybe plays up a little for dramatic effect.

Doge Kops, as it happens, is actually pretty hilarious. Phil passes out on Clint’s shoulder ten minutes into the second episode, body pliant and heavy against his side, breath puffing softly into his neck. Clint twists his head a little and kisses the top of Phil’s head. There are new sheets on their bed, and Clint might have scattered rose petals on top of them, but all of that can wait.

He’s got his Valentine’s Day right here.

 


End file.
